The Summer House Read online

  Connie is growing angrier and angrier with each passing second, hating how the lieutenant colonel is completely ignoring her.

  Cook says, “With your deployment, sir, who will be assigned as rear detachment commander?”

  A long second or two passes. Marcello says, “Not bad for a former NYPD cop. The rear detachment commander will be Captain Rory O’Connell. He has a few months left before his ETS, so he’ll be handling personnel issues and other routine matters for the battalion.”

  “I’d like to arrange to interview him, sir,” Cook says.

  “You don’t need my permission, Major. But he’ll be a busy man, dealing with the battalion’s affairs.” Another glance at his watch. “You have time for one more question, Major. Make it a good one.”

  Cook says, “Sir, these four men under your command, they are in serious trouble, having been arrested in connection with the violent deaths of seven civilians. At some point in our investigation would you consider being a character witness for them?”

  Connie is surprised at how quickly and violently Marcello delivers his one-sentence answer. “Not on your life.”

  Cook says, “Sir…if I may…why is that?”

  Marcello looks at his watch one more time. “In the field, there is no squad that I’d rather have at my back than Sergeant Jefferson’s. But we’re not always in the field. Since they’ve been CONUS, they’ve been a constant pain to me. Some years ago, Major, a predecessor to my battalion command saw his career ruined because his Rangers acted wild on post and off. That’s not going to happen to me. As far as I’m concerned, the quicker those four are convicted and sent off to prison the better.”

  Cook says, “I see, sir.”

  “Glad you do,” the colonel says.

  Chapter 15

  EVEN WITH HIS rental car’s air-conditioning, Special Agent Manuel Sanchez has sweated through his suit coat, shirt, and trousers, and his miserable day out in rural Georgia is not even close to being over. Following the tour of The Summer House—now forever to be known in their official paperwork as the murder house—Major Cook and Special Agent York headed off to Hunter Army Airfield. Lieutenant Huang and Captain Pierce were sent to the nearby town of Ralston to interview the four jailed Rangers.

  Cook said to Sanchez, “The sheriff said a woman witness was out walking her dog the night of the killings. That means she’s around here. Go find her and talk to her.”

  But as Sanchez quickly learned, around here is a pretty wide swath of mostly empty land.

  The nearest two dirt roads off the main road led to nothing but dead-end turnarounds, sprinkled with empty beer cans, broken cardboard boxes, and plenty of shot-up targets and broken bottles.

  The third dirt lane led to an empty house.

  The fourth dirt driveway ended at a worn and sagging gray house, where a heavyset, tattooed, bearded man wearing cut-off jean shorts and rubber boots up to his knees—and no shirt—came out onto the leaning porch with an old couch taking up most of it, eyed Sanchez as he identified himself, and then said, “You’re not one of those Jehovah’s Witness types, are you?”

  “No, sir,” he said. “Like I said, I’m a special agent in the US Army, conducting an investigation.”

  “About what?”

  “The people who were murdered up the road, at the place called The Summer House.”

  The man scratched at his hairy belly and said, “Don’t know nothing about that. But if you do see any Witnesses in your travels, tell ’em not to bother knockin’ on my door. My soul ain’t worth saving.”

  Now he’s at a third house, going down a short but wide dirt driveway that has a campaign sign at its entrance—REELECT SHERIFF WILLIAMS—and when he gets out of the silver Ford sedan, he hears a dog barking from inside the single-story ranch-style home, with yellow clapboards, black shutters, and peeling paint.

  A good sign.

  He walks up to the wide front porch, taking everything in. There’s a parked Volkswagen Beetle—a new model, though rusted and battered some—and a sagging clothesline, and an old washer-dryer combo dumped to the side. He takes a step up onto the porch, the dog barking even louder, and knocks on the door. The porch has two chairs whose upholstery is torn, letting some stuffing dangle out. There’s a water bowl on the wooden planks, and the door leading into the house has deep gouges, like a dog is used to scratching it, begging to come inside.

  He knocks twice more before a woman cautiously opens the door. “Yes?” she asks.

  The woman is in her late forties or early fifties, face worn and tired, her gray-black hair pulled back in a ponytail. She’s wearing a floral housecoat that she’s grasping around her neck, and she’s keeping the screen door closed.

  “Ma’am, sorry to bother you, but I’m Special Agent Manuel Sanchez of the US Army.”

  Her tired eyes widen. “The Army? For real?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he says. “Here’s my badge and identification.”

  He holds his leather wallet up to the screen, and the woman gives it a quick glance and says in a voice that’s almost a hoarse whisper, “What’s the Army doing around here?”

  “I’m part of a team investigating the murders of seven civilians who lived up the road, at The Summer House,” he says. “Four Army personnel have been arrested.”

  The woman looks uneasy, and Sanchez says, “I’ve talked to Sheriff Williams about her investigation. She said a woman walking her dog saw a Ford pickup truck leave the house right after the shootings. It was you, correct?”

  He waits.

  Behind the woman the barking dog is louder and louder.

  Sanchez wonders if he should press her when she says, “That’s right.”

  Finally, he thinks, and he opens the screen door and gently presses himself into the house. “I promise, this will only take a few minutes.”

  Inside the house, a large dog that looks to be a brown mongrel with large floppy ears leaps up and nearly knocks Sanchez on his ass. He backpedals as the woman says, “Toby, Toby, you knock that off, right now!’

  A large smear of dog drool hits Sanchez’s pants leg as the dog barrels past him and bursts through the open front doors, howling and barking in apparent joy after breaking free.

  She closes both doors and says, “That Toby. He sure has a spirit ’bout him. When he wants to run, he runs. When he don’t want to come in, he don’t come in.”

  Sanchez quickly takes in the house. Before him and to the left is a kitchen area, and to the right is a small living room. Behind him is a small coatrack with a light jacket, a raincoat, and an umbrella hanging from pegs. There’s another water bowl and a half filled dog bowl below the coatrack.

  He’s still looking around when he says, “Ma’am, I’m sorry, I don’t recall your name.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Wendy. Wendy Gabriel. Would you like to sit down?”

  The interior of the house is relatively cool after spending the last couple of hours traipsing outside in the hot Georgia sun, but Sanchez isn’t sure how to reply. The interior of the house is so crowded and cluttered that he can’t believe it’s still standing. There are piles of newspapers, magazines, stuffed cardboard boxes, folded-up clothes, more newspapers, and more magazines, and mail…hundreds of pieces, it looks like. A hollowed-out area in the living room reveals a worn couch and a television set, and a nightstand piled with bags of dog treats and candy.

  A hoarder, he thinks, but he gives the woman credit: she’s a neat hoarder. Everything seems to be in its place, though there are lots of places.

  “This way,” she says, and they go into the kitchen, where there’s a lonely uncluttered chair. Wendy picks up thick piles of Newsweek magazines—the top one has a photo of Ronald Reagan on the cover—and he sits down.

  “Thank you, ma’am. I promise I won’t stay long.”

  She sits down, too, hand still holding the housecoat closed. “Those killings…horrible, simply horrible. My God. Is the Army going to arrest them, too?”

  “The c
rimes were committed off post, ma’am, so it’s under civilian police authority,” he says, taking out a small notebook and pencil. “But the Army still wants to know what happened, the how and the why.”

  She says, “But how come you’re not in uniform?”

  Which is approximately the nine hundredth time Sanchez has been asked this, and he says, “I’m with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. We usually wear civilian clothes because it helps us blend in while we’re doing our job. Now, if I may…”

  He flips open to a blank page in the notebook and says, “Sheriff Williams told me that you witnessed a Ford F-150 pickup truck leaving the residence sometime Wednesday night. Do you recall what time it was?”

  She says, “Oh, yes, without a doubt. A bit after 8:00 p.m., right after Jeopardy! was over. I was taking Toby for a walk.”

  “Along the main road, then, right?”

  “That’s right,” she says.

  “And what did you see?”

  She shifts in her chair. “We were heading home. We were on the side of the road where the dirt path leads into that place where the college kids were stayin’. The one everyone calls The Summer House. Is it true, they was all shot? And a baby girl, too?”

  He nods. “True, I’m sorry to say. What did you hear? Or see?”

  Wendy wipes at her eyes. “So sad. So very, very sad…Well, it wasn’t sad then, it was just strange, that’s all. I was with Toby, and I heard a loud bang, like a truck was backfiring. Then a bit of gunfire…not loud, but like…well, like they were shooting from the bottom of a well. Now, I know what regular shooting sounds like, but maybe it sounded different because it was inside, not outside? You know what I mean?”

  “That I do,” he says. “And did you hear anything else?”

  “Well, before the shooting happened, a helicopter flew over. And after the shooting stopped, we walked another minute or two, and just by that dirt road, this Ford pickup is driving real fast and nearly runs me and Toby down. They stopped for just a second, and then they sped off, went north.”

  “Did you see who was driving?”

  “This real angry-looking black man, and there was another fella sitting next to him. They both looked at me, and, Christ, I was scared. I don’t know why, but the way they looked at me, they frightened me some.”

  “Had you ever seen those men before?”

  “Nope.”

  Sanchez is taking notes, mind dancing along, knowing that when this case comes to trial, she’s going to be one hell of a witness for the county.

  “Ma’am, Sheriff Williams says you remembered the license plate of the truck. Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, excuse me for saying this, but did you write it down?”

  “Nope.”

  “Had you seen the truck before in the area?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then…”

  The first smile of his visit appears. “You’re asking me how I remembered what I saw? Easy. I like doing them puzzle books, you know, fill in the blanks and the crossword puzzles? Letters and numbers, they stick with me. I remembered the first three letters and the first number…afraid I didn’t catch the rest.”

  “And what was that?”

  “The letters T-B-B, followed by the numeral 3. The sheriff later told me, when she thanked me for being a witness and picking those photos of those two fellas, she said she was able to trace down the letters and number and match it to that angry black guy driving the truck.”

  “But the letters and the numeral 3? Why did you remember that?”

  “Easy,” she says. “T for Toby. And B-B because I call him Baby all the time. And the number 3—that’s how old he is. Toby Baby 3.”

  Sanchez writes that down, as Toby Baby remains outside, howling and running.

  “Ma’am, when did you learn about the murders?”

  “When Deputy Coulson, when he came by the next day, asking me if I saw anything in the area the night before. I told him and gave him the license plate letters and number, and a few hours later, I was at the county building, talking to the sheriff.”

  There you go, Sanchez thinks, and he says, “Ma’am, is there anything else you can tell me? Anything else at all?”

  She shakes her head, the smile fading, still looking tired and discarded. “No, I can’t think of anything.”

  Sanchez takes out his business card, passes it over. “Ma’am, thanks so much for your help. I greatly appreciate it. This card has the number for my cell phone and my office. You think of anything, anything at all, call me at any time.”

  He gets up, and the woman looks at both sides of the card and says, “Is there a reward?”

  Sanchez says, “If I find out there’s one, you’ll be the first to know.”

  He gives the place one good last glance, from the piles of dirty dishes in the sink to the endless piles of mail and other junk to the two coats and umbrella hanging from the coatrack to the water bowl and bowl of food. There are also three doggie chew toys, neatly lined up. Two covered plastic bins neatly filled with dry dog food. A shelf that holds a grooming brush and small boxes of dog vitamins and pills.

  Wendy opens the door, leading the way out, and yells, “Toby! Toby Baby! Come back home now! You come!”

  He goes to his car, gives the woman a pleasant wave, gets into the car, and starts up the engine, letting the cold air just wash over him.

  Sanchez makes a turn and then heads away from the woman’s home, wondering why Wendy Gabriel lied to him.

  Chapter 16

  CAPTAIN ALLEN PIERCE is lost, a feeling he hates, and he turns around once more in the town of Sullivan, looking for the district attorney’s office. Twice he has parked at the county courthouse, which also holds the sheriff’s department and is next to the county jail, and both times the doors were locked, even though an earlier phone call to the district attorney said he would be waiting for Allen in his office.

  What the hell is going on here? Are the locals making fun of the Army outsiders and laughing while seeing them go around in circles? There’s been a group of residents sitting on benches across the way at a park that proudly boasts a Confederate Army soldier statue, and Allen is feeling that’s exactly what’s going on.

  He looks at his iPhone, checks the address for District Attorney Cornelius Slate, sees the address, and—

  The numbers don’t match.

  On the wooden sign near the parking lot is the number 44, noting the street address for the county buildings.

  Slate’s address is listed as 62 Sullivan Highway, also known as Route 119. Not in the county buildings after all.

  He pulls out of the parking lot.

  Fool, he thinks. Overreacting.

  And lost to boot.

  Fifteen minutes later, Allen’s in a renovated, light-yellow Victorian house where Cornelius Slate shares space with a dentist’s office. The heavyset, cheerful man putters around his crowded office, offering him coffee from a Keurig machine, talking about the weather, and inquiring about Allen’s travels. On a hardwood floor covered with dusty Oriental rugs sit bookshelves and filing cabinets, and framed black-and-white photos of what looks to be downtown Sullivan hang on the wall.

  Slate is in his sixties, paunchy, wearing dark-green trousers with suspenders and a striped shirt, sleeves rolled up his beefy forearms. His head is fleshy, white hair combed back in a pompadour, and his black-rimmed reading glasses are perched halfway down his nose.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Allen says for the third time since arriving.

  “Ah, don’t worry about it,” Slate replies, making a dismissive wave of his hand. “Not all district attorneys in Georgia are high-paid employees of the county, hanging out in fancy courthouses. You get out of one of those urban counties like Chatham, where Savannah is, it gets rural real quick. There’s not enough crime around here to maintain a full-time district attorney, so I have my own practice and step up to the plate when need be. Which is an honor but can also c
ut down on some of my billable hours, not able to defend a client ’cause of the conflict of interest.”

  “Have you been district attorney that long?” he asks.

  “Ten years, and two more, God willing, if the good folks here in Sullivan County decide to return me to office.”

  Allen holds the warm cup in his hands. “I’ve seen the campaign signs. For you, the sheriff, the congressman, others.”

  “It’s that time of year,” he says. “Tell me, young fella, you seem a smart sort. Where did you go to school? How did you end up in the Army?”

  “I went to Columbia,” Allen says. “One of my professors…he had been a first responder on 9/11 before going to law school. He died young of cancer, probably from working at the Towers after they came down.”

  Slate nods. “Revenge, then.”

  Allen corrects him. “Justice. And have you always practiced law here?”

  The district attorney grins. “Sure looks like it, the messy office I got, the town where I live. Nope, I went to George Mason and then worked corporate law for Georgia-Pacific for lots of years. Ended up with a fat paycheck and sleepless nights. Quit Georgia-Pacific. Now I have a small paycheck and I sleep like the proverbial baby.”

  Then he shakes his head and says, “Well, what a mess, eh? All those murders, those four Rangers arrested. And at The Summer House at that. What a goddamn shame, to see a lovely place like that get run-down and dirty, and then have all those folks get shot inside. A real damn shame.”

  Slate leans back in his old-style office chair, which loudly creaks. “I can see why the Army sent a fella like you down here, but what’s your job? To defend them?”

  “No,” Allen says, sipping the coffee, which is one of those vanilla blended-spice types he despises. “I’m part of an investigative unit assigned to high-profile crimes like this. We’re looking to gather information, ensure that all the facts are known.”